52 posts on what matters to me

Recipe for Spring Onions

When the Monkey and I visited friends in Manhattan last weekend, one (of many) highlights was a great taco restaurant in the East Village. We had these amazing grilled spring onions called Cebollitas. The monkey tracked down the recipe, just in time for the abundant spring onions at the farmers markets all around us. I bought a ton of spring onions this morning so we can make more of this very easy and oh-so-tasty spring side dish.

Tasty bunches of spring onions just waiting to be grilled!

Easy Cebollitas

Wash several bunches of fresh spring onions and peel off the outermost layer, slice the root end off, and cut the greens about 4 inches above the bulb. If there’s another 4 inches of nice thick green stem, cut that, and discard the tapered tips.

Put all the onions into a bowl and drizzle with olive or grapeseed oil (grapeseed oil tolerates higher temps). Sprinkle with just a bit of kosher or sea salt, and splash a little liquid smoke over the onions to make up for the fact that these onions are not really getting grilled.

Heat a non-stick skillet – a grill pan if you have one – to medium-high heat, and toss in the onions first (add any green stems you kept a few minutes later so as not to overcook them). Let the onions cook till they become tender, and let them brown here and there (so don’t overstir them – you want just a little char in a few places). When the onions are tender and the stems are wilted, squeeze fresh lime juice over them (as much or little as you want – I used one whole lime). Serve hot.

We had these with hamburgers – so I heated the oven to about 250 while I cooked the onions, and when they were done I put them in the oven to stay hot, and I cooked the hamburgers in the same grill pan so they could soak up the smokey onion goodness. Yum!